**Source: PSS vol 41**

The German communists of whom we must now speak do not call themselves "left-wing" but – if I am not mistaken – a "principled opposition"{19}. But that they fully correspond to the characteristics of the "infantile disorder of leftism" will be evident from the exposition that follows.

A pamphlet standing on the viewpoint of this opposition, "The Split in the Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus League)," published by a "local group in Frankfurt am Main," sets forth with the highest degree of relief, precision, clarity, and brevity the essence of this opposition's views. A few quotations will suffice to acquaint readers with this essence:

"The Communist Party is the party of the most decisive class struggle…"

"…Politically this transitional period" (between capitalism and socialism) "is a period of proletarian dictatorship…"

"…The question arises: who should be the bearer of the dictatorship: the Communist Party or the proletarian class?.. Should we strive in principle for the dictatorship of the Communist Party or for the dictatorship of the proletarian class?..."

(Italics throughout the quotation taken from the original.)

Further, the author of the pamphlet accuses the "Zentrale" [Central Committee] of the Communist Party of Germany of seeking paths to coalition with the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany, that the "question of the principled recognition of all political means" of struggle, including parliamentarism, is advanced by this "Zentrale" only as a cover for its real and chief strivings toward coalition with the Independents. And the pamphlet continues:

"The Opposition has chosen another path. It holds the view that the question of the dominance of the Communist Party and of the dictatorship of the party is merely a question of tactics. In any case, the dominance of the Communist Party is the last form of every dominance of a party. In principle we must strive for the dictatorship of the proletarian class. And all the measures of the party, its organization, its form of struggle, its strategy and tactics must be adapted to this. Accordingly, every compromise with other parties must be categorically rejected, every return to historically and politically exhausted forms of struggle – parliamentarism, every policy of maneuvering and conciliationism." "The specifically proletarian methods of revolutionary struggle must be strongly emphasized. And in order to draw in the broadest proletarian circles and strata, which must engage in revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party, new organizational forms must be created on the broadest possible basis and with the widest possible scope. This gathering place of all revolutionary elements is the workers' league, built on the basis of factory organizations. In it all workers must be united who have adopted the slogan: out of the trade unions! Here the fighting proletariat is organized in the broadest battle formations. Recognition of class struggle, the Soviet system, and dictatorship is sufficient for entry. All further political education of the fighting masses and political orientation in struggle is the task of the Communist Party, which stands outside the workers' league…"

"…Two Communist parties now stand opposed to each other:

One – the party of leaders, which seeks to organize revolutionary struggle and direct it from above, making compromises and resorting to parliamentarism in order to create such situations as would allow it to enter a coalition government in whose hands the dictatorship would be concentrated.

The other – the mass party, which expects the upsurge of revolutionary struggle from below, knowing and employing for this struggle only one method clearly leading to the goal, rejecting all parliamentary and opportunistic methods; this sole method is that of unconditional overthrow of the bourgeoisie in order then to establish proletarian class dictatorship for the accomplishment of socialism…"

"…There the dictatorship of leaders – here the dictatorship of the masses! such is our slogan."

Such are the most essential positions characterizing the views of the opposition in the German Communist Party.

Any Bolshevik who has consciously gone through or closely observed the development of Bolshevism since 1903 will say at once, upon reading these arguments: "What an old, long-familiar piece of rubbish! What childishness of 'leftism'!"

But let us examine these arguments more closely.

The very posing of the question: "dictatorship of the party or dictatorship of the class? dictatorship of (the party of) leaders or dictatorship of (the party of) the masses?" – testifies to the most extraordinary and hopeless confusion of thought. People strain to invent something entirely novel, and in their zeal for theorizing become ridiculous. Everyone knows that the masses are divided into classes; that one can oppose masses to classes only by opposing the vast majority in general, not divided according to their position in the social system of production, to categories occupying a special position in the social system of production; that classes are ordinarily guided, and in the majority of cases, at least in contemporary civilized countries, by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are directed by more or less stable groups of the most authoritative, influential, experienced persons, selected for the most responsible positions, called leaders. All this is ABC. All this is simple and clear. Why then was it necessary to resort instead to some gibberish, some new Volapük? On the one hand, it appears, people became confused, having fallen into a difficult position when the rapid alternation between legal and illegal status of the party disrupts the usual, normal, simple relationship between leaders, parties, and classes. In Germany, as in other European countries, there was too much accustoming to legality, to free and proper election of "leaders" by regular party congresses, to convenient verification of the class composition of parties through elections to parliament, meetings, press, the sentiments of trade unions and other organizations, etc. When, owing to the stormy course of revolution and the development of civil war, it became necessary rapidly to shift between legality and illegality, to combine them, to employ "inconvenient," "undemocratic" methods of selecting, forming, or preserving "groups of leaders" – people became confused and began to invent supernatural nonsense. Probably some members of the Dutch Communist Party, who had the misfortune to be born in a small country, with the tradition and conditions of an especially privileged and especially stable legal position, people who have never witnessed the alternation of legal and illegal status, became confused and bewildered themselves and contributed to absurd inventions.

On the other hand, it is evident that there is simple lack of thought, incoherent use of words "fashionable" in our times – about "mass" and about "leaders." People have heard much and firmly memorized attacks on "leaders," the counterposing of them to the "masses," but they have not succeeded in thinking things through, in clarifying for themselves what goes with what.

The divergence of "leaders" and "masses" made itself especially sharply evident at the end of the imperialist war and after it in all countries. Marx and Engels explained the basic cause of this phenomenon many times in 1852–1892 on the example of England. England's monopoly position singled out from the "masses" a "labor aristocracy," semi-bourgeois, opportunistic. The leaders of this labor aristocracy constantly went over to the side of the bourgeoisie, were – directly or indirectly – on its payroll. Marx earned himself the honorable hatred of this scum for openly branding them as traitors. The modern (twentieth-century) imperialism created a monopoly-privileged position for several advanced countries, and on this soil everywhere in the Second International there appeared the type of leaders–traitors, opportunists, social-chauvinists, defending the interests of their caste, their layer of labor aristocracy. There arose a detachment of opportunistic parties from the "masses," i.e., from the broadest strata of the toilers, from the majority of them, from the most poorly paid workers. Victory of the revolutionary proletariat is impossible without struggle against this evil, without the exposure, public shaming, and expulsion of opportunistic, social-traitor leaders; the Third International has pursued precisely this policy.

To argue on this basis to the general counterposing of the dictatorship of the masses to the dictatorship of leaders is laughable nonsense and stupidity. What is especially amusing is that in practice instead of the old leaders who adhered to common-sense views on simple matters, in practice they are advancing (under the guise of the slogan: "down with leaders") new leaders who talk supernatural nonsense and confusion. Such are in Germany Laufenberg, Wolfheim, Horner, Karl Schröder, Friedrich Wendel, Karl Erler{4}. The attempts of the latter to "deepen" the question and declare the unnecessary and "bourgeois" character of political parties in general is already such Herculean pillar of absurdity that one can only throw up one's hands. Truly: from a small error one can always make a monstrously large one if one insists on the error, if one deepens its justification, if one "carries it to its logical conclusion."

Denial of party nature and party discipline – this is what has resulted from the opposition. And this is equivalent to the complete disarming of the proletariat in favor of the bourgeoisie. This is equivalent precisely to that petty-bourgeois fragmentation, instability, incapacity for persistence, for unity, for coordinated action, which inevitably will destroy every proletarian revolutionary movement if one gives it free rein. To deny party nature from the standpoint of communism means to make a leap from the eve of the collapse of capitalism (in Germany) not to the lower and not to the intermediate, but to the highest phase of communism. We in Russia are experiencing (in the third year after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie) the first steps of the transition from capitalism to socialism, or the lower stage of communism. Classes have remained and will remain for years everywhere after the seizure of power by the proletariat. Perhaps only in England, where there are no peasants (though there are small proprietors!), will this period be shorter. To abolish classes – means not only to drive out landlords and capitalists – this we have done relatively easily – it also means to abolish small commodity producers, and they cannot be driven out, they cannot be suppressed, one must come to terms with them, one can (and must) remake and re-educate them only through very prolonged, slow, cautious organizational work. They surround the proletariat on all sides with petty-bourgeois spontaneity, permeate it with it, corrupt it with it, constantly call forth within the proletariat recurrences of petty-bourgeois spinelessness, fragmentation, individualism, oscillations from enthusiasm to despondency. There is needed the strictest centralization and discipline within the political party of the proletariat in order to oppose this, in order to conduct properly, successfully, victoriously the organizing role of the proletariat (and this is its chief role). The dictatorship of the proletariat is stubborn struggle, bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, pedagogical and administrative, against the forces and traditions of the old society. The force of habit of millions and tens of millions – this is the most terrible force. Without a party, iron and tempered in struggle, without a party enjoying the confidence of all that is honest in the given class, without a party capable of observing the sentiments of the masses and influencing them, it is impossible to conduct such struggle successfully. It is a thousand times easier to vanquish large centralized bourgeoisie than to "vanquish" millions and millions of small proprietors, and they by their everyday, humdrum, invisible, elusive, decomposing activity accomplish precisely those results needed by the bourgeoisie, which restore the bourgeoisie. Whoever weakens in any degree the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship) is in fact aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.

Alongside the question of leaders – party – class – mass, one must put the question of "reactionary" trade unions. But first allow me to make a couple of concluding remarks based on the experience of our party. Attacks on the "dictatorship of leaders" in our party have always existed: I first recall such attacks in 1895, when formally there was still no party, but a central group in Petersburg was beginning to form and had to assume the guidance of district groups{20}. At the Ninth Congress of our party (April 1920){21} there was a small opposition, also speaking against the "dictatorship of leaders," "oligarchy," and so on. There is nothing surprising, therefore, nothing new, nothing frightening in the "infantile disorder" of "left communism" among the Germans. This disorder passes safely, and the organism becomes even stronger after it. On the other hand, the rapid alternation of legal and illegal work, connected with the necessity of especially "concealing," especially conspiring precisely the main headquarters, precisely the leaders, sometimes led us to deeply dangerous phenomena. The worst was that in 1912 the provocateur Malinovsky entered the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. He ruined dozens and dozens of the best and most devoted comrades, bringing them under penal servitude and hastening the death of many of them. If he did not cause even greater harm, it was because we had correctly established the relationship between legal and illegal work. In order to win trust among us, Malinovsky, as a member of the Central Committee and a Deputy of the Duma, had to help us establish legal daily newspapers, which even under tsarism knew how to conduct struggle against the opportunism of the Mensheviks, to preach the foundations of Bolshevism in suitably disguised form. With one hand sending to penal servitude and death dozens and dozens of the best workers of Bolshevism, Malinovsky had with the other hand to help in the education of dozens and dozens of thousands of new Bolsheviks through the legal press. On this fact it behooves those German (as well as English, American, French, and Italian) comrades who face the task of learning to conduct revolutionary work in reactionary trade unions to think carefully{5}.

In many countries, and including the most advanced, the bourgeoisie is undoubtedly now sending and will send provocateurs into Communist parties. One of the means of struggle against this danger is the skillful combination of illegal and legal work.